The Seep of Sorrowwood

I never thought much about the bed frame that arrived one Tuesday evening, wrapped in a tarp like a body. My friend had offered me a white wicker set—light, airy, the kind that whispered summer. But when my partner, Marcus, finally hauled it through the door of our stilted house at the edge of the Sorrowwood Forest, it wasn’t wicker. It was a massive, blackened mahogany four-poster, the wood scarred and blackened as if it had been charred in a fire that never finished. The headboard was carved with a tangle of thorns so intricate they seemed to writhe in the dim light.

I asked Marcus where the white set was. He just shrugged, his eyes distant. ‘She gave me this one,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘Fell out the back of the truck three times on the winding road. Broke a wooden wheel on the trailer. She laughed, said it was in a hurry to get here. I didn’t think much of it.’ I didn’t either, at the time. But as he set it down, the floorboards groaned—a low, resonant sound that seemed to come from the hill itself.

We lived high in the mountains, over 5,500 feet, in a house propped on wooden legs like a stork standing in a stream. The altitude was thin and cool, and clouds often rolled through the living room, filling the air with a damp silver. The guest bedroom at the end of the hall had a large window that faced the forest. I planned to set the frame there, thinking to give it a coat of paint. But every time I entered that room, a heavy cold settled into my bones, and I’d find myself standing still, listening to the wind that always seemed to circle the house.

Three days passed. I finally dragged the frame apart from the four-poster. The slats and rails scattered across the floor like the ribs of a beast. I knelt to fit the headboard into the side rails, and as I pressed, a wave of nausea hit me—so suddenly and violently that my stomach turned and I retched, vomiting on the hardwood. The room spun. The cold intensified, so sharp it bit my skin. I crawled out on my hands and knees, gasping, and fled to the kitchen where the air was warm from the oven.

I tried to explain the feeling to Marcus when he got home. He laughed it off, said it was just altitude sickness, the clouds, a bad batch of mushrooms from the market. But something in his eyes was hollow, and he kept glancing toward the guest room. That Friday night, he invited a few friends over—a small get-together, he said. Whiskey and cards. I tried to be social, but my mind kept drifting to the room at the end of the hall.

Around midnight, the power went out. We fumbled for candles, the laughter turning nervous. Then someone suggested we use the guest room for a séance, as a joke. I laughed too, but my throat was dry. We went inside, and the candles threw dancing shapes on the walls. The bed frame stood against the wall, its shadow like a gaping mouth. We sat in a circle on the mattress that was still on the floor.

One of the guests, a woman named Lena, began to chant—a made-up rhyme, we thought. But as her voice rose, the temperature plummeted. I saw my breath pluming. The candles flickered, guttering. Then the headboard creaked. Lena fell silent, her face gone white. She whispered, ‘What is that?’ We all looked, and for a moment I saw a figure—a tall, thin shape in the corner, shrouded in shadow, with eyes like holes burned in paper.

The séance ended in chaos. Everyone left, their goodbyes clipped. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed them out. Marcus said nothing, but he wouldn’t go back to that room.

The next morning, I decided I had to get rid of the frame. I called a junk hauler, but when the truck pulled up, the driver took one look at the frame through the window and crossed himself. ‘That’s not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘That’s the Hag’s Bed.’ He told me a local legend: decades ago, a woman named Elowen had lived in a cabin up the hill. She was a healer, or a witch, depending on who you asked. She was accused of cursing the town when a boy died of fever. They built a fire, but the wood wouldn’t catch. So they hacked down her bed and burned her on it. They said her last words were a promise—that anyone who slept in that bed would never wake, unless they could undo the wrong.

The frame had survived, half-buried in ash. The driver refused to take it. He told me to burn it, but warned that the wood wouldn’t catch until the right person stood beside it. I was desperate. I called Marcus, but he was gone, hours away, and his voice was hollow. I hung up, and in the silence, I felt it—a pressure in the house, a weight.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my own bed, listening to the wind. And then I heard it: a scraping, slow and deliberate, coming from the guest room. The sound of wood dragging across wood. I crept to the door and saw through the crack that the four-poster frame was reassembling itself. Slats slid into rails, bolts turned on their own, and the headboard stood tall, its carved thorns seeming to flex.

I backed away, my heart hammering. The door slammed shut. Then a voice, soft as dry leaves, said, ‘You must sleep in it. You must dream the way to break the curse.’ I pressed my back to the wall. ‘Who are you?’ I managed. A shadow pooled at the end of the hallway. ‘I am the one who waits. I am the wood that was torn. Sleep in my arms, and I will show you the truth.’

I won’t say I did it willingly. I fought, but my legs carried me forward as if the house itself pushed me. I entered that room, where the bed gleamed in the candlelight, no longer charred but polished, beautiful. I lay down, and the sheets were cold as grave earth. As I closed my eyes, I felt a presence press beside me—an invisible weight on the mattress. And in my dream, I saw Elowen’s life in flashes: her kindness, the boy’s fatal accident, the mob’s fury. I saw the flaw in their accusation—the boy had died of a hidden snakebite, not a curse. The truth was buried, but an old journal had the proof.

I woke with a gasp. The pad of paper on the nightstand was covered in my own handwriting—a detailed description of the journal’s location: beneath the church altar, in a box marked with a crow. I knew what I had to do. I dressed in the dark, and I drove down the mountain, fog curling around the truck. At the chapel, I moved the altar stone, and there it was: a leather-bound journal, its pages brittle. I opened it and saw Elowen’s words, her account of the boy’s death and a drawing of the snake. It was all there.

When I returned home, something felt changed. The house was still cold, but quieter. I went to the guest room, and the bed frame was gone. In its place lay a single white rose and a note, faded: ‘The truth frees. I am at peace.’ I stood there, breathing harsh, my hands shaking. I heard Marcus’s truck rumble into the gravel outside, but he didn’t come in for a long time. When he finally did, his eyes were vacant, and he walked past me as if I weren’t there, heading straight to the guest room. The door clicked shut behind him.

Now, I lie awake each night in my own bed, listening to the silence from that room. I know that the frame is back, and it has taken someone new. The roads are steep, and the fog is thick. And I wonder if I freed anything at all, or if I’ve only made the wood stronger with fresh memory. The house creaks, the wind weeps, and in the guest room, I hear a muffled breathing that isn’t mine. Somewhere below, in the roots of this hill, the old wood seeps its sorrow into the soil, and I fear it will never stop growing.